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In 24 Hours, Myfishbowl Players Provide 300,000 Meals For Lao School Children

BANGKOK – On 24 August, MyFishBowl, a Facebook-based Chinese language game, launched a week-long online campaign “Action Against Hunger” with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Within just one day, MyFishBowl players had donated over US$100,000 - enough for more than 300,000 school meals for children in WFP’s School Feeding Progamme in Laos.

MyFishBowl players populate their virtual aquariums with fish. Each time a player buys a fish for US$2, WFP is able to provide six children with a school meal. Gamers also have the opportunity to share campaign news and invite their friends to join the campaign.

“This is the first of a series of collaborations with the WFP; our mission is to make the world happy, not just for gamers, so that everyone can benefit from our games,” said Wang Haining, CEO of Happy Elements.

Happy Elements, the Beijing-based parent company, launched "MyFishbowl" (開心水族箱) on Facebook in August 2009. It has since become the largest social game developer for the global Chinese Facebook market. Within two months it had attracted 2.4 million daily active users, and started a new wave of fishbowl games on Facebook. http://apps.facebook.com/happyfishbowl/

“We are impressed that so many players have supported this hunger campaign – almost instantly. If everyone does a little, through the virtual game, it makes a massive impact for children in the real world” said Monica Marshall, Deputy Director of Private Partnerships for WFP.

Happy Elements has released games with 12 languages in more than 100 countries, on 14 SNS platforms as well as in Apple Store. Every day, 5 million people all over the world interact with their friends through Happy Elements' games.

Happy Elements is proud to partner with WFP, and confirms that after the online platform's 30 percent payment channel fee (standard for all games), all proceeds from the campaign are paid directly to WFP.

WFP provides nutritious school meals to more than 22 million children in more than 60 countries each year. A daily school meal provides a strong incentive to send children to school and keep them there and allows the children to focus on their studies, rather than their stomachs.